Hand pumps provided by NGOs are the primary source of clean water for millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa. Studies have shown that as many as 36% of these pumps are not operational at any given time and remain broken for an average of over 30 days. The Intelligent Water Project will enable NGOs and State Agencies to monitor the status of hand pumps and provide the information necessary to ensure rapid intervention in the case of a failure.
A project of the Messiah College Collaboratory led by Dr. Randall Fish, and in cooperation with World Vision and AlignedWorks the team has successfully produced sensor units, installed on each water pump to provide state of operation information, that prove the feasibility of remote monitoring. Currently, we are working to demonstrate reliability, improve accuracy, and prepare for production on a larger scale to expand the impact to more communities all over Africa. Recently we have been working with our partner in Burkina Faso to provide them with any information and documentation that they need to successfully install the latest revision of the system on pumps there.
